"I declare Miss Kemp had almost persuaded me to take that brown straw
with the green velvet bandeau before I thought of asking Gabriella's
advice," Mrs. Spencer was overheard saying to her daughter, as she
paused, panting and breathless, at the head of the short flight of
steps.

"Oh, Gabriella always had taste; I'll ask her about mine," Florrie
tossed back gaily in the high fluting notes which expressed so perfectly
the brilliant, if slightly metallic, quality of her personality.

Beside her mother, a plump, bouncing person, with a noisy though
imperfectly articulate habit of speech, and the prominent hips and bust
which composed the "fine figure" of the period, Florrie seemed to float
with all the elusive, magic loveliness of a sunbeam. From the shining
nimbus of her hair to her small tripping feet she was the incarnation of
girlhood--of that white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the
imagination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as unconsciously as a
flower sheds its perfume. Though her eyes were softly veiled by her
lashes, every male clerk in Brandywine & Plummer's was dazzled by the
deep blue light of her glances. In her red mouth, with its parted lips,
in the pure rose and white of her flesh, in the rich curve of her bosom,
which promised already the "fine figure" of her mother, youth and summer
were calling as they called in the velvet softness of the June breeze.
Innocent though she was, the powers of Life had selected her as a
vehicle for their inscrutable ends.

"Where is Miss Carr? I must speak to Miss Carr, please," she said to one
of the shop girls who came up, eager to serve her. "Will you tell her
that Miss Spencer is waiting to speak to her?"